the reason why bradford pears are everywhere is bc they are invasive species 🫠 some states will even pay you if you cut them down!
Unfortunately they appear to have been planted intentionally all over town here ... like right out front of the elementary school. Where they look like perfectly lovely trees MOST of the year. Apparently one annual week of That Stank isn't enough to justify replacing them with more normal trees.
AND there's an entirely different type of tree/shrub that's also all over town, and it smells the same! It used to be outside my old workplace in gawky-tree-form, and now the neighbors across the street have it as a hedge outside their front door. Maybe they can't actually smell it; one of my old coworkers couldn't.
At any rate, as much as I'd love to get paid to take out some of these skunkplants, there are far too many of them being diligently watered for me to expect that to work out for me. More's the pity.
